Revenge Porn Bill Clears The House Just After Midnight

Bill criminalizing revenge porn in Connecticut approved by the House early Wednesday

After a far-reaching debate that was broad enough to encompass complex legal issues, Jennifer Lopez' fashion sense and disgraced former New York congressman Anthony Weiner, the House passed a bill bolstering the state's laws regarding voyeurism and criminalizing revenge porn.

The unanimous vote was announced at 12:05 a.m. Wednesday, following more than an hour of discussion. The measure now moves to the Senate for consideration.

House Bill 6921 seeks to address "an uncomfortable but very serious issue of voyeurism, the unlawful dissemination of intimate pictures and videos and other materials,'' said Rep. William Tong, D-Stamford and the co-chairman of the legislature's judiciary committee. "It's an issue that's arisen because technology has enhanced and enabled new forms of crime and criminality and this seeks to get ahead of that to protect people in our communities, particularly our most vulnerable....people who find themselves in a trusting relationship and that trust was violated."

It would strengthen the state's prohibition on voyeurism and enhance the penalty if the victim is under 16. It explicitly prohibits "upskirting," or taking a photo of a woman underneath her skirt. It also shields the names and other identifying information of voyeurism victims.

The bill also creates a new class of criminal behavior: revenge porn, or the sharing of intimate images without consent in an effort to harm or harass. The crime would be a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison.

Similar proposals have come up in the past but each time, the measure fell short of passage. But Tong it is important to criminalize such behavior because it can bring untold embarrassment and harm to victims and civil penalties are not enough of a deterrent.

"This is a very serious issue,'' Tong said. "There are people out there tonight whose boyfriends or husbands are publishing images of them having sex. It's disgusting. It should stop. It ought to be a criminal act.''

The bill cleared the legislature's judiciary committee in late March but lawmakers continued to refine the legislation. On Tuesday, it was amended to add specific details of the images that would be prohibited.

The language of the bill is blunt and specific: it bars the dissemination of images depicting "the genitals, pubic area or buttocks of another person with less than a fully opaque covering of such body part, or the breast of such other person who is female with less than a fully opaque covering of any portion of such breast below the top of the nipple, or...another person engaged in sexual intercourse'' if the aim is to humiliate or embarrass.

That prompted Rep. Doug Dubitsky, a Republican from Chaplin, to wonder if images of women wearing the type of provocative outfits favored by entertainers would be barred under the proposal. "Jennifer Lopez, for example...tends to wear a type of dress that exposes a large portion of the section of the women's breast that is described in this section of the amendment and I was wondering if the proponent had done any research on the type of attire that's currently popular in Hollywood that expose this part of the female anatomy,'' he said.

Tong explained that lawmakers sought to include very specific language in the legislation. "We did the best that we could to pass an amendment that would pass constitutional muster,'' he said. "There are speech issues attendant to this action...so we tried to draft a statute to meet those concerns."

Rep. Art O'Neill, R-Southbury, raised several practical concerns about the bill. "There is something that criminalizes various forms of expression that sort of causes one...to be concerned,'' he said.

O'Neill also questioned how such a law could be enforced in an age when Internet content doesn't conform to state boundaries. "If somebody's in another state that doesn't have any kind of law like this, they're going to say as far as they know, they're not violating any criminal law,'' he said.

The bill does contain a carve out that exempts news organizations and others from criminal penalties if the image they are disseminating is in the public interest. "Think Anthony Weiner,'' Tong said, referring to the former New York congressman who got into trouble for tweeting raunchy photos of himself. "That is a news story and it [has] an element of public interest."